ROMA (2018)

Posted on December 17th, 2018 by Adam-Troy Castro

I was slow to fall fully in love in Alfonso Cuaron’s ROMA (2018), but from the very first shot, the one under the opening credits, I suspected that I eventually would.

That opening shot is of patterned floor tile. As soon as the credits end we will learn that it lines the narrow enclosed driveway of a well-to-do home in a Mexican city, that it is the domain of the unfortunate family dog who is never walked elsewhere or allowed in the house, and that despite daily washing it is the rest of the time a minefield of dog shit. (You can tell what time of day it is by how many turds litter the space.) None of this do we know yet. No, we are just looking down on the floor tile, a civilized pattern.

Then it is inundated, from somewhere, with a wave of soapy water. As it clears we see the reflection of a square patch of light, which as it clears, is revealed to us as a space formed by the junction of rooftops, forming an atrium. The family drama, we gather immediately, will be largely enclosed within this space, and so it shall be, though it ventures many other places. The reflection also captures a faraway jet crossing that sky, and we immediately sense what the shot is telling us, that from here there will be glimpses of a grander outside world, but still, the focus here is intimate, what is visible within this atrium.

More waves of soapy water come, one after another, blurring that patch of sky that returns to clarity between inundations, and this tells us still more — that we are about to see a film driven in part by the passage of time. (We have no way of knowing that the climax is driven by ocean waves, an echo two hours away, but in retrospect this works, too.)

The movie has so far done nothing but point its camera at the ground, while the credits play, and yes, it has told us everything.

I did not fall in love with the film for almost an hour. I knew I was watching a work of art with this shot, I knew I was watching something beautiful within five minutes, I knew I was watching something extraordinary when, not much later, that driveway is used by a luxury car that, in this narrow space, is a bitch and a half to park. It cannot enter without great care and backtracking and damage to the walls and the car. It doesn’t belong there, and this, too, is a detail that tells us everything.

I became engaged with the movie when the protagonist, the family maid, goes to a movie, her drama in the foreground while an inane military farce plays in the background; and I realized I was watching an all-out masterpiece later on, on a trip to a department store.

Movie buffs love to praise elaborate camera setpieces where extended business takes place all in one shot, and I must report that this film has several, a couple of them action setpieces that would not be out of place in a completely different film. The department store is one; a hospital is another; and that beach, my god, that beach, is a third. The technical requirements in all three must have been staggering. But in all three they are put to the service of a story not about some living-weapon superspy, laying out wave after wave of enemy agents, coming at her in waves; but about one woman living a year in her life, whose personal drama is one small part of another, that affects the lives of the family employing her. They could have been filmed much more conventionally but they would not have been one tenth as powerful. That they are filmed with genius, is more than we had the right to expect. This is a great film, and yes (sigh) I understand why I have been urged to see it on a big screen, which turned out to not be in the cards. I saw it at home. But if you can see it theatrically, please do. And give it the time it deserves.

Tags: Roma | Category Movies

You Have No Idea What Kind of Movie DARK HAZARD (1934) Is

Posted on November 10th, 2018 by Adam-Troy Castro

Thursday night’s astonishing vintage artifact recorded off TCM: DARK HAZARD (1934), starring Edward G. Robinson.

I am hornswoggled that this movie exists. Absolutely baffled. When the closing credits came up, I cried out, “What the f—?” And I am serious. The only possible explanation I can come up with is that it is one of those movie stories deformed by protectiveness toward the star, like finding out at the end of SCENT OF WOMAN that Al Pacino’s suicidal, destructive blowhard is beloved by children.
And first of all I’ve got to address that title. Knowing nothing else about the film, but aware of Edward G. Robinson, you have got to believe it to be some kind of proto-noir, a thriller where things end badly, right?

Dark Hazard is the name of a greyhound who the Robinson character, Jim “Buck” Taylor, falls in love with.

Honestly. DARK HAZARD is a movie about a broken man healed by the love of a dog.

About the last thing you would expect of this star and that title.

But first, we have Buck’s opening plight. He’s a gambler who’s lost everything and is now working at the stables at the racetrack. He looks for a place to live and finds a rooming house, whose owner is one of those sneering Margaret Hamilton types who lets him know she’s on to him at minute one. She hates people who even work at the racetrack, and is downright hateful to Buck, who really is nothing but kind and humble during the conversation. Honestly, cruel disapproval is her default.

As it happens, this harridan has a kinder daughter, who Buck marries, and before long they are living in a hotel where Buck is night clerk, and they are struggling even though their rent is included, and the guy who owns the hotel is a total pill who berates him at every opportunity. (Honestly, this movie is full of people berating the kindly Buck.) Buck no longer gambles, but he does read the racing forms for entertainment, and gives tips to one guest who makes quite a bit of money, following Buck’s information. This leads to a gangster contriving to get Buck fired and forcing him back into the business, which is really going all the way around Robin Hood’s barn for minimal purposes, because he doesn’t want Buck to gamble for him. He wants Buck to run his dog track out in California, even though Buck knows nothing about racing dogs and has shown no management skill.

You expect that gangster to turn on him, don’t you? No, after that early ribbing he’s never anything but nice to Buck.

Now living in California in a house where Buck likes to stand out front and water the bamboo, the pair is more prosperous, except that Buck’s wife is openly ashamed of him working at the race track and bitter about the occasional windfalls he brings home (as he inevitably drifts back into gambling, having streaks of good fortune that earn him sums that would be terrific today). At about this point Buck meets Dark Hazard, an up and coming dog, and if you have ever seen a human being melt with adoration of a dog, at first sight, that is Buck.

An old girlfriend from Buck’s old gambling days shows up. She is one of those old-movie wise-cracking broads, who we know is supposed to be a bad girl because she dresses more snappily than Buck’s saintly church-going wife. We know she’s up to no good because she’s openly astonished to find Buck living the straight life and because she’s wearing a fortune in jewelry in broad daylight Buck, of course, keeps a solid marital line of demarcation between himself and this old friend, and he is so open and above board above this old relationship that he invites the old girl along with a group of friends and work associates to take the wife out to a fancy dinner, but she, of course, sees through the bimbo immediately, weeping that her husband should even know such a woman. She, in fact, packs up and leaves.

You expect Buck to find out that the old girlfriend is in the employ of his crooked boss and that she’s betraying him cruelly? No, that never happens.

Buck eventually ends up on the skids and after two years on the road, ends up back in middle America, living in the same rooming house with his wife and their baby boy, as they head toward divorce; and though she decides to give him another chance, the wife continues to let him know that he’s a problem that must be handled, and her mother continues to let him know that he’s no good. It’s a grim life.

By this point, I had taken to telling Judi that I really, really, hated the wife character. She’s a total pill. She seems to be the one we should be rooting for, but god is she a pill. She is always moralizing at him, always rude to his friends, always throwing tantrums, not when he loses, but when he wins; always seizing the opportunity to lord it over him when he’s down.

It’s at about this point that the dog, Dark Hazard, has a career-ending injury and seems headed for euthanasia, which horrifies Buck. He buys the dog. This, of course, horrifies his wife and mother in law, who won’t have that “filthy thing” in the house. Buck builds him a doghouse, massages the dog’s broken leg, does everything he can to rehabilitate him, all while radiating love and delight in the dog, cooing encouragement and so on. (It’s some of the most endearing acting of Robinson’s distinguished career.) This goes on until Buck finds out that his wife has decided to further that divorce and marry the other guy, at which point he takes the dog and hits the road, thumbing rides. We see him feeding the dog all the meat from his only sandwich just before hopping into a car for parts unknown.

So, aside from ACKNOWLEDGING that the sweet wife was always a pill and that the movie knows it, where does this film then go?

Well, another two year gap. Back at the dog racing track. Dark Hazard, who has made such a spectacular recovery he’s a BETTER runner than he was before breaking his leg, has won another race. (Never mind that he must be at least five by now and very old for a racing greyhound, who usually retire at three.) A flush, well-respected Buck emerges from a back room, with a six-figure fortune from his latest triumph at cards. The old girlfriend, now his wife, still festooned with jewels in broad daylight, shows up, pets the dog, takes most of Buck’s winnings to make sure they don’t get blown immediately, and they head off happily.

What the fuck?

That DOESN’T HAPPEN in movies of this vintage!

Tags: Edward G. Robinson, Movies | Category Movies

On the Timid Visitors to A Strange and Alien Place

Posted on November 7th, 2018 by Adam-Troy Castro

Originally Published on Facebook 7 November 2017.

Have any of you ever been in a multiplex movie theatre when the buses deliver church groups there to see the latest Kevin Sorbo film, which could be titled anything but which really does possess the unspoken subtitle, DON’T WORRY, YOU’RE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING YOU BELIEVE, AND ALL THOSE ATHEISTS WILL EVENTUALLY FIND OUT THEY’RE WRONG?

I have. Three times so far, for different movies. It’s a spectacle.

The first thing you find out, about church groups arriving at the multiplex to watch the latest defensive film, WE KNOW ATHEISTS SCARE YOU AND IT’S OKAY, is that nobody goes for entertainment. They go because it’s a grim duty. They go because they have been instructed that all movies not based on this kind of subject are evil and that they are being bused in to show support for godliness in this temple of far more sinful entertainments. Nobody expects to enjoy themselves. They are grim-faced, exactly the way you are when you are about to go to an interminable church service with the father whose sermons drone on and on and on. They know that they’re not going to have a good time. Having a good time is irrelevant. This is duty. And so they huddle together, many of them in their church clothes, as if they just got off the train to Auschwitz and expected a selection at any moment. Many have permanently devoted one hand to holding a soft-cover Bible, and they clutch it with special fervency in the movie palace, because you never know; somebody may run up and take it.

The next thing you find out is how many of them know nothing about the modern movie-going experience. They express total bafflement at the prices, to start with, and they start by regaling each other over how much a movie cost the last time they went. Four dollars? You’re kidding! Last time I went it was two! Or One! Then there are the posters for the other attractions. The ones that don’t baffle them completely — who is a Transformer, exactly? Where is a Hunger game? What is a Jennifer Lawrence? Do you think that actor in that poster is Jewish? — horrify them; that one over there is rated R! Good Golly Miss Molly! How can such a thing be permitted? The posters for horror movies give them the vapors, and I am not talking about the posters for genuinely gory stuff, but even PG-rated material meant for kids, roller-coaster rides set in haunted houses that might actually be roller-coaster rides, soon, if Disney can clear up the space. The mere existence of this stuff, on any level, terrifies them. Those who don’t discreetly avert their eyes call the lobby’s attention to how scandalized they are so they can ostentatiously avert their eyes. It’s important for everyone else in sight to know that this is not their domain.

These are the elderly church ladies and their husbands, and often they have with them another group, kids, who fall into three categories. The first is those who are too young to have completely signed up, who are wide-eyed by the video games and all the movie images and vocal about the movies they would like to see if only they were not being dragged to this important duty: let’s say, some superhero incarnation. They are either talked over or told that their family doesn’t go see movies like that, we’ll pray over that when we get home.

The second group of kids is those who have gotten old enough to sign on, who are beaming and clean-cut and well-scrubbed and eager for the movie to impart all the lessons they are weekly told about the evils of secular humanism. These are sweet and charming and well-behaved and it’s difficult not to love them, from a distance.

The third group of kids are those old enough to sign up but who haven’t, and they are equally divided between the tolerant, the eye-rolling, the profoundly embarrassed (who make eye contact with all the civilians, apologizing for being with these people), and the angrily resentful (I am only with these people by accident). When I saw the group enter to see GOD’S NOT DEAD, MERELY COUGHING, or whatever it was, one of those kids said something to the effect that the multiplex was filled with a dozen other movies he actually wanted to see and that he was stuck being dragged to this shit, and his mother slapped him in the back of the head. Hard. Glowering with rage, he allowed himself to be dragged in to listen to more of the off-putting shit he listened to daily.

Again, the one thing this doesn’t look like, really, is like it’s a lick of fun. Maybe there’ll be fun, later, when they all pile back aboard the bus and head back to the church, where they will have a spirited discussion of what they just saw, “spirited discussion” meaning that they’ll all agree with what they just saw and that nobody will have a dissenting opinion. And they’ll be back in the theatre only after another movie of the same sort, or another filmed Bible story, arrives there.

And if you’re wondering why Kevin Sorbo will make a movie of this sort when nobody is actually enthused about seeing it, this is why. I have seen this, as I have said, three times. Church groups getting off buses. They go because they have to. Because those are the rules. I promise you, the makers of such films get fliers out to the churches and sell the idea that seeing these movies is a major moral stand, which these people take on out of dedication and duty and a whole lot of fear that any other kind of movie is made. The makers know exactly how much money this movie will make and so they know exactly how much to spend on it. While telling themselves it will outgross the current Marvel offering.

Three times I have been in quiet lobbies waiting for my film when these groups swept in. Three different groups. I am telling you all that changes is the faces.

Tags: Kevin Sorbo, Religion | Category Movies